The thing with this here social work is you see an awful lot of people’s awful lots in life. The stuff you read about and don’t think about and mostly never see. Child abuse, obviously. Domestic violence, like how we talked about. Poverty. Real poverty. Bare floorboards poverty. Eating food or making rent but never both poverty. Oxfam reckons 1 in 5 people in the UK are living below the poverty line, living hard and unhappy lives made harder and unhappier by cuts to services that mean the help they used to get isn’t around any more.

Poverty’s rubbish. It’s depressing and humiliating. It’s bad for your health and for kids’ development. It brings violence. It kills you sooner. Poverty means kids skipping breakfast, skipping lunch at weekends when schools aren’t around to feed them. The country’s full of these miseries and the government’s piling miseries upon them, making out cuts to services are the only way of fixing the problem services didn’t get us into.

As a social worker I’m supposed to be part of the solution. Sometimes I am. If someone comes to the office claiming destitution and I can’t prove them wrong and they’ve got kids they might get a few quid. If someone comes to the office claiming destitution and I can’t prove them wrong but they’ve not got kids they won’t get anything unless they can drum up another crisis or two, like a spot of severe mental illness. More often now the solution’s being outsourced to charities. We send people to the Salvation Army for a bit of free food and to a furniture recycler that gives out decent stuff for a few quid. And we apply to Buttle UK, a cracking charity I hadn’t heard of ten weeks ago and now rely on.

They give small grants to people who need them, providing things so basic we should be embarrassed they have to. They give people beds, bedding, cookers, washing machines and fridge freezers, and cash to buy vital bits and pieces we barely even think about having. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t have them. They get to be the Chazza of the Month. You can help them continue their low-key awesomeness by donating a few quid. And, yes, you could argue it’s shocking to have to turn to charity to get this kind of help for vulnerable families, but then you’re a pinko Commie. Its no better than they deserve given their colossal tax evasion, massive fraud and lead role in the global financial crisis.

With the Olympics all done with and the Paralympics prepping itself for interest considerably less feigned than usual, it’s time to reflect on the heroes at whom we marvel, the champions who capture our hearts, the icons who inspire a generation. Jessica Ennis. Usain Bolt. Me.

You’ll recall how last year I ran a couple of 10ks for chazza, helping round up a team who together raised almost eight grand for them there children’s homes in Nepal. You’ll recall, too, how embarrassed I was by the whole thing, scared I’d come off like Steve from Accounts who does nothing for 364 consecutive days and then thinks he’s the world’s greatest humanitarian for pegging it up his high street once a year. Like people who buy the charity X Factor single and think they’re doing their bit, or people who fanny around the office with a red nose and think they’re ker-azy. How I hate them.

That said, I’m doing it again. Which is a shame, given the extent to which I can’t be bothered and the fact I’ve hardly trained. After that second 10k my enthusiasm tailed off thanks to a lousy autumn, a lousier winter and a spot of essay-induced exhaustion. Getting back into it has been an uphill struggle. Sometimes literally. The Edinburgh 10k was so steep and hilly, at one point I was actually running upside down. But that’s the life of a fundraiser. You have to lead by example, which is why I’m now running a half marathon.

So far we’ve got a team of 14 aiming for the Edinburgh 5k and 10k, the Glasgow 10k and half marathon, and the Jedburgh and London half marathons, and I’m hoping to nag another six people into joining us. By which I mean I’m hoping to nag six people already running into nagging another six people into joining us given I’ve run out of friends on account of my personality. Point is we’re aiming for a bigger team and more money than last year. I’m hoping also to bore the shit out of Twitter with a constant stream of updates about training runs, ingesting protein and maxing out my quads, as is the wont of the amateur middle distance runner.

To help in these endeavours I will use my high profile as the world’s most beloved blogger and my legendary trademark as an athlete extraordinaire. Usain has the lightening bolt. Mo Farah has the mobot. I have being a prick. Now sponsor me, you bastards.

Picture me now atop a two-tier car transporter, an almost unbelievably naff driving jacket bulking out my meagre frame. Above me, a wildly inaccurate banner, preparing itself for the bitter historical irony to come, proclaims my victory. I have solved the emissions problem. I have bought a new car.

You’ll recall how climate change is happening and how it dooms us all and how we’re almost certainly to blame for it. I say almost certainly on account of those three Texan scientists holed up in the Fox News bunker; two of them dermatologists sifting through climate data handwritten by Esso, and one of them a theoretical linguist researching the outer limits of the word ‘consensus’. You’ll recall, too, my recent struggle to buy a less polluting vehicle that hilariously resulted in me getting screwed by a used car dealer, losing a load of money, losing the car he sold me, briefly fearing for my life and ending up with a wreck that was significantly more polluting than the one it replaced. How I laughed. This thing was spewing 156g of carbon dioxide per kilometre, a failure so polluting I covered my face in shame every time I drove past Al Gore’s house hoping to catch a glimpse of him undressing for bed.

However, with this big fat social work job and an actual salary for the first time in two years, I figured now was the time to set things right. Although not to the extent of using public transport. That’s a colossal sell out, I know, but I did my last placement on public transport and lost about two hours a day to dicking around on tardy buses and feeling slightly vulnerable in dodgy neighbourhoods. When you’ve told someone you’re taking their kids and then stand at a bus stop outside their living room window your pulse does tend to quicken somewhat.

That was the first of many compromises. Zero emission cars are so far out of my price range if I even showed interest in one I’d be laughed off the lot with no recourse to a rich, handsome John to give me cash and teach those salesmen a thing or two, as is the case for heart-of-gold prostitutes. Hybrids are less expensive but no less ungettable thanks to a hefty load of student debt. We were left with a fossil fuelled transport machine, severely limiting both the amount of good I could do and the corresponding level of smugness I could reasonably be allowed to exhibit.

I started looking at the lowest emission fossil fuel cars around and realised my best hope lay in the tiniest engine I could get in the newest car I could afford. The kind of engine that roars like a moth’s trump and believes firmly in the idea that a combination of slow and steady will win the race. Mrs Zero wasn’t going for that, however, her latent boy racerism outing itself with demands for a bigger, faster engine. Veering between the categories of compromise, sell-out and Nick Clegg I ended up with a 1.6 litre engine attached to a car that was new enough to spew only 119g of carbon per kilometre. Plus it’s diesel, meaning it’s slightly less polluting and allows me to give passers by a spot of cancer. It’s a saving of 37g per kilometre which, with the 1200 kilometres I’ve driven so far, adds up to about 444 kilograms of carbon dioxide saved. If every driver in the country did the same we’d be talking about a saving of billions, even with Clarkson still fannying around in his orphan powered smog machines. So while it seemed, at first, that I‘d achieved very little it turns out I’ve taken the first step in a billion gram journey. Even if I did drive it in a fairly polluting car and you can’t measure distance by weight.